Main Menu

Bob Carter Warns of Likely Global Cooling

THE National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that October in the US was marked by 63 record snowfalls and 115 lowest-ever temperatures.

Over the past few years, similar signs of colder than usual weather have been recorded all over the world, causing many people to question the still fashionable, but now long outdated, global warming alarmism. Yet individual weather events or spells, whether warmings or coolings, tell us nothing necessarily about true climate change.

Nonetheless, by coincidence, growing recognition of a threat of climatic cooling is correct, because since the turn of the 21st century all real world, long-term climate indicators have turned downwards. Global atmospheric temperature reached a peak in 1998, has not warmed since 1995 and, has been cooling since 2002. Some people, still under the thrall of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change’s disproved projections of warming, seem surprised by this cooling trend, even to the point of denying it. But why?

There are two fundamentally different ways in which computers can be used to project climate. The first is used by the modelling groups that provide climate projections to the IPCC. These groups deploy general circulation models, which use complex partial differential equations to describe the ocean-atmosphere climate system mathematically. When fed with appropriate initial data, these models can calculate possible future climate states. The models presume (wrongly) that we have a complete understanding of the climate system.

GCMs are subject to the well-known computer phenomenon of GIGO, which translates as “garbage in, God’s-truth out”.

Alternative computer projections of climate can be constructed using data on past climate change, by identifying mathematical (often rhythmic) patterns within them and projecting these patterns into the future. Such models are statistical and empirical, and make no presumptions about complete understanding; instead, they seek to recognise and project into the future the climate patterns that exist in real world data.

In 2001, Russian geologist Sergey Kotov used the mathematics of chaos to analyse the atmospheric temperature record of the past 4000 years from a Greenland ice core. Based on the pattern he recognised in the data, Kotov extrapolated cooling from 2000 to about 2030, followed by warming to the end of the century and 300 years of cooling thereafter.

In 2003, Russian scientists Klyashtorin and Lyubushin analysed the global surface thermometer temperature record from 1860 to 2000, and identified a recurring 60-year cycle. This probably relates to the Pacific decadal oscillation, which can be caricatured as a large scale El Nino/La Nina climatic oscillation. The late 20thcentury warming represents the most recent warm half-cycle of the PDO, and it projects forwards as cooling of one-tenth of a degree or more to 2030.

In 2004, US scientist Craig Loehle used simple periodic models to analyse climate records over the past 1000 years of sea-surface temperature from a Caribbean marine core and cave air temperature from a South African stalactite. Without using data for the 20th century, six of his seven models showed a warming trend similar to that in the instrumental record over the past 150 years; and projecting forward the best fit model foreshadows cooling of between 0.7 and 1 degree Celsius during the next 20-40 years. In 2007, the 60-year climate cycle was identified again, by Chinese scientists Lin Zhen-Shan and Sun Xian, who used a novel multi-variate analysis of the 1881-2002 temperature records for China. They showed that temperature variation in China leads parallel variation in global temperature by five-10 years, and has been falling since 2001. They conclude “we see clearly that global and northern hemisphere temperature will drop on century scale in the next 20 years”.

Most recently, Italian scientist Adriano Mazzarella demonstrated statistical links between solar magnetic activity, the length of the Earth day (LOD), and northern hemisphere wind and ocean temperature patterns. He too confirmed the existence of a 60-year climate cycle, and described various correlations (some negative). Based on these correlations, Mazzarella concludes that provided “the observed past correlation between LOD and sea-surface temperature continues in the future, the identified 60-year cycle provides a possible decline in sea-surface temperature starting from 2005, and the recent data seem to support such a result”.

Thus, using several fundamentally different mathematical techniques and many different data sets, seven scientists all forecast that climatic cooling will occur during the first decades of the 21st century. Temperature records confirm that cooling is under way, the length and intensity of which remains unknown.

Yet in spite of this, governments across the world – egged on by irrational, deep Green lobbying – have for years been using their financial muscle and other powers of persuasion to introduce carbon dioxide taxation systems. For example, the federal Labor government recently spent $13.9million on climate change advertising on prime time television and in national newspapers and magazines.

Similarly, the London-based Institute for Public Policy Research advised the British Government “ultimately, positive climate behaviours need to be approached in the same way as marketeers approach acts of buying and consuming … It amounts to treating climate-friendly activity as a brand that can be sold. This is, we believe, the route to mass behaviour change.”

Introduction of a carbon dioxide tax to prevent (imaginary) warming, euphemistically disguised as an emissions trading scheme, is a politician’s, ticket clipper’s and mafia chief’s dream. All will welcome a new source of income based on an invisible, colourless, odourless, tasteless and often unmeasurable gas. No commodity changes hands during its trading, and should carbon dioxide emissions actually decrease because of the existence of a carbon dioxide market (which is highly unlikely), the odds are that it will have no measurable effect on climate anyway. Nonetheless, the glistening pot of gold which beckons to be mined from the innocent public is proving nigh irresistible, and it is going to need a strong taxpayer revolt to stop it in Australia.

The present global financial crisis should be inducing politicians not to squander money on non-solutions to non-problems. Yet to support their plans for emissions taxation Western governments, including ours, are still propagating scientifically juvenile greenhouse propaganda underpinned only by circumstantial evidence and GCM computer gamesmanship.

Perhaps a reassessment will finally occur when two-metre thick ice develops again on Father Thames at London Bridge, or when cooling causes massive crop failure in the world’s granary belts.

***************

Bob Carter is an adjunct professor of geology at James Cook University and studies ancient climate change. His many publications are listed at his home page here. This article was first published in the The Australian and is republished with permission from Prof Carter. The photograph of Prof Carter was taken in Brisbane in October 2008 by Jennifer Marohasy.

– can we have a tight summary of what Bob is saying – e.g. how long will the cooling persist and to what levels? i.e. when will global temperatures get back to 1970s or 1900 levels and stay there?

And how certain is Bob of this cooling e.g. maybe, possible, certain, very certain, definite? And may we have some probabilities on what these terms mean e.g. 90% sure, 50% etc – or even if qualitative.

That’s what I love… it is not enough to try and discredit AGW, but oh no it is now “Global Cooling” again!!! Isn’t that one of the key arguments against AGW that in the 1970s some fringe scientists scared people in to thinking it was going to cool. In thirty years they will be trying to claim AGW is false and they will say “But in 2008 scientists thought it was cooling” and bloody Carter will be referenced once again.

Through its intimate connection with the El Niño/Southern Oscillation system, climate variability in the tropical Pacific Ocean influences climate across much of the planet. But the history of temperature change in the tropical Pacific Ocean during recent millennia is poorly known: the available annually resolved records1, 2 are discontinuous and rarely span more than a few centuries. Longer records at coarser temporal resolution suggest that significant oceanographic changes, observed at multi-year to multi-century resolution, have had important effects on global climate3, 4, 5. Here we use a diatom record from El Junco Lake, Galápagos, to produce a calibrated, continuous record of sea surface temperature in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean at subdecadal resolution, spanning the past 1,200 years. Our reconstruction reveals that the most recent 50 years are the warmest 50-year period within the record. Because our diatom-based sea surface temperature index resembles Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstructions, we suggest that with continued anthropogenic warming, the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean may continue to warm.

Excellent post Bob! Well written in plain-speak, and informative. Could you please provide citations to the work of the seven scientists that you referenced? I would very much like to follow up on those studies. Thanks!

So what David, care to inform all and sundry when we didn’t get temps. in the high 30s and into the 40s, in Jan and Feb anywhere between, say, Melbourne and Brisbane. It’s high summer, one expects stinkers and “tinderbox conditions”.
I’m sceptical of the implications of “horrific fire conditions after 12 years of drought”. Hmmmmm……. same old same old……..

Janama pull the other one! Could you IMAGINE your RIDICULE if someone said the earth is warming because:

“Russian geologist Sergey Kotov used the mathematics of chaos to analyse the atmospheric temperature record of the past 4000 years from a Greenland ice core. Based on the pattern he recognised in the data, Kotov extrapolated warming from 2000 to about 2030, followed by more warming to the end of the century and 300 years of warming thereafter.”

or

“US scientist Craig Loehle used simple periodic models to analyse climate records … six of his seven models showed a warming trend similar to that in the instrumental record over the past 150 years; and projecting forward the best fit model foreshadows warming of between 0.7 and 1 degree Celsius during the next 20-40 years.”

Next we need someone to track down to track down the latent and sensible heat gained by the cryosphere. Any takers?

When all the data is in, Bob Carter can do the honors of adding it all up and finding the total climate system heat gain (or loss) since 2000. (I’m assuming he already has the heat content numbers for the atmosphere, since he said it is cooling since 1998.)

I agree with you, he should publish something, but just which journal would you recommend.?

For starters, could it conceivably be one that:

1. Declares openly who will be undertaking the Peer Reveiw.

2. Makes the reviewer(s) report, available to Bob, in unaltered form.

3. Gives Bob have a right of reply to the Peers assessments.

4. Were the publisher signs a declaration that what has been done in 1 & 2 & 3 above is the complete extent of the assessment.

5. If the end result is that this particular publisher declines to publish, will the publisher make the reasons available, or will the publisher just hide behind the old canard of commercial in confidence.

“Alternative computer projections of climate can be constructed using data on past climate change, by identifying mathematical (often rhythmic) patterns within them and projecting these patterns into the future. Such models are statistical and empirical, and make no presumptions about complete understanding; instead, they seek to recognise and project into the future the climate patterns that exist in real world data.”

This is exactly the method (called “technical analysis”) use in equity and financial instrument markets. Literally no other information but the historic charts can be used to predict future value trends of any given instrument often with more accuracy than analysts working intimately with the annual reports… Although, because every financial institution is aware of technical analysis it suffers from an “observer effect” and works best combined with other types of fundamental analysis and due diligences. Climate wouldn’t have an observer effect problem.

Anyone familiar with the efforts by major banks to model the relatively simple equity markets could have told the IPCC that their GCM approach of using “complex partial differential equations to describe the ocean-atmosphere climate system mathematically,” was doomed to failure.

For if the IPCC could use “initial state” computer models to accurately forecast the future climates, surely the much more highly motivated (and funded) financial wizards would have cracked the much simpler financial markets sometime ago.

But there is a more fundamental problem….even if we did have adequate computing power and understand climate well enough to mathematically model it we’d have to be living in a fundamentally different kind of universe for our models to forecast from an initial state anything more than their own future.

A record from Wanxiang Cave, China, characterizes Asian Monsoon (AM) history over the past 1810 years. The summer monsoon correlates with solar variability, Northern Hemisphere and Chinese temperature, Alpine glacial retreat, and Chinese cultural changes. It was generally strong during Europe’s Medieval Warm Period and weak during Europe’s Little Ice Age, as well as during the final decades of the Tang, Yuan, and Ming Dynasties, all times that were characterized by popular unrest. It was strong during the first several decades of the Northern Song Dynasty, a period of increased rice cultivation and dramatic population increase.

The sign of the correlation between the AM and temperature switches around 1960, suggesting that anthropogenic forcing superseded natural forcing as the major driver of AM changes in the late 20th century.

There’s a good comparison of the difference between the two prediction techniques described in this article. Pat Michaels and the University fo Virginia team have been using historical data to predict future trends. Hansen et al have been using computer models that are based on differential equations and assumptions about the climate.

As far back as 1988, Michaels predicted modest future warming while Hansen was predicting 1.5 times or more of the same warming. By 1998, Hansen admitted he was wrong, or at least, he claimed his computer was wrong. You gotta love it when people program a computer with their ideas on the climate then blame the computer when the predictions are wrong.

Twenty years down the road, it’s becoming apparent that Michaels et al are on the right track whereas Hansen’s predictive abilities are in question. Michaels has stepped out and predicted that a doubling of CO2 would make a barely perceptable difference to world temperatures and that Kyoto is a waste of money. His predictions are beginning to look pretty good.

Luke. Cycles is all we got, my disingenuous lovechild. It’s all in the curves. There are only three things climate vectors can do – go up, down or sideways.

Naturally, AGW acolytes abhor cycles. Cycles? What cycles?

Why, if there were historic climate cycles similar to today then we wouldn’t need a special hypothesis to explain only the utterly ordinary climate trends of the 20th century…

But we know there are no such cycles. Michael Mann created his famous Hockey Stick Graph to show that cycles don’t exist to explain 20 th century warming. Therefore we need a special hypothesis.

Hold on a minute! If it was as warm in 1937 as 1998, and even warmer still in 1000 AD, then the one-off AGW hypothesis might not be necessary to explain modern climate. Maybe, just maybe, modern times are some how a continuation of historic times. They could even be related some how. I know, it sound mad.

Perhaps a closer look at the cycles in the historical record is a good thing, Luke. God knows its a dangerous thing to do. The IPCC has studious avoided any detailed studies of temperatures, or sea levels before about 1850, especially the ones where anything but orthodox Mannian flatness is shown to exist. It’s as if time began in 1855 for the IPCC.

In spite of AGW scholasticism, a few outcasts think that some complex variety of cycles is dominating climate evolution and because of that one could parse the amplitudes and wave lengths, etc. to make forecasts, even without understanding the first causes. Fools. They should listen to Luke: “treachery and false promises lurk.” Whoooooaaa. Luke, do you have a peer reviewed reference for that claim, other than the writings of the Early Church Fathers.

The real beauty of this sort of technical analysis as opposed to GCMs is it simplifies the problem to just analysing the past hard historic data without recourse to soft theories about causes and driving forces, AND… it will result in short term predictions of the type that can be tested before we all in our graves.

Bloody hell, imagine that! A climate hypothesis that comes with predictions that can be tested within our lifetimes! Woo hoo!

What a change from the AGW hypothesis whose apologists assure us that, although we need to take drastic socio-economic action now, the AGW hypothesis makes no usefully verifiable forecasts before for at least the next 40 years. In the meantime we could have a new Maunder Minimum, no worries, the oceans are just bloody well taking their time heating up. Cycles? What cycles?

you need to learn the difference between a cycle and a pseudo-cycle. A cycle would mean that past records would determine the future path. This is not what we see in nature.
A pseudo-cycle means that it has the outward appearance of being cyclical, but isn’t.

Wes – there’s enough quasi-periodic behaviour in the climate system to give the appearance of cyclical behaviour where it may not really exist. Another variant above China when suddenly a corrleation ends …

The classic cyccles debate would be the utility or otherwise of Inigo Jones/Lennox Walker sunspots in climate forecasting. If you do the rigorous stats you may be disappointed – and I assume Wesley that you would want a rigorous statistical analysis of any empirical data. The other trap being to overfit what looks to be cyclical behaviour with far too many parameters for your own good. These system typically fall over on tests with independent data or on true forecast mode. So if you want to jump headlong in cycles – statisticians with sharp knives await your folly.

“cycle and a pseudo-cycle”; NT discovers stochasticity; what next Hurst scaling?

Brad; that link about land warming has no author; have you noted the subsequent paper by Compo and Sardeshmukh which concurs with the conclusion of land warming but correlates it with [natural] SST increase, which of course is entirely correlated with ENSO/upwelling variation; the classic case being the Great Pacific Climate Shift in 1976 which was entirely responsible for the bulk of the temperature increase from 1976 -1998 [quick sod, do a WFT graph]; the 1998 El Nino is responsible for the rest.

The Bob Carter piece seems targeted at taking a swipe at the AGW camp and sowing seeds of doubt in the minds of the public over scientific opinion. Probably a good thing with so much being uncertain at present. Certainly there is not much credible evidence to panic about warming just yet. Putting things into perspective, the .04c down on the IPCC forecast seems somewhat out of place, but to spin .02c down on recent temps as a sign of global cooling is certainly absurd at this stage. Temps stepped up after 1998 and they have not yet stepped down to pre 98 levels. Rationally, one should talk about cooling with more certainty if and when that starts to happen. One could reasonably argue that solar minimum and ocean cycles are conspiring to dampen AGW in the short term.

This won’t stop the futile debating between the naive fanatics (NT, Luke, MattB…) and the cranks (Gorden, Wes, Louis…) over such ambiguous data… interesting times.

Highly relevant to future climatic cooling is what I’ve been saying for quite some time. i.e. study the aa index of geomagnetic activity for it is this index that gives the best indication of what has happened since 1884 and that our production of CO2 is puny in the scheme of things. The aa index has doubled and been in an uptrend for over 100 years and only a halfwit would ignore this fact. However the last thirty years of this index seems to indicate signs of instability or what one may call the shakes. This could mean a turning point after a rather long very active period. The present extended solar minimum could be confirmation of why this index is now heading down.

Oops…sorry those ocean cycles don’t exist according to NT… so I suppose I can’t use that argument to defend the plausibility of AGW… and point out that the talk of AGW’s death is a little premature right now. Or actually I suspect it’s OK to talk about cycles when they support whatever NT is ranting about but are not OK when they are inconvenient to NT’s current rant. 😉

And just who the hell do you presume to be to summarily categorise people into various categories?

On what basis do you dismiss Gordon, Wes and myself as cranks? Cognitve dissonance?

You really have not done your homework, have you. I don’t reject AGW on the basis of ambiguous data, I reject it on first principles that its isn’t a scientific theory to start with. That science is being misused to hammer it down our collective throats is another matter and I will take a potshot when I can see an opportunity for effectiveness.

Equally I don’t bother arguing temperature trivia with them either, so your comment is, at best, inaccurate. As far as I am concerned, all the hub bub over temperature anomalies less than the instrumental accuracy of the thermometers makes it all a lot of statistical waffle – this usually happens when the data are not self evident. It also means the theory is wrong, which is hardly surprising. This is a line I have taken for quite a few years.

But I have to admit I am impressed with the increwasing collection of pejorative appellations – nutter, denier, now its crank, what next, tobacco scientist?

Actually, I am fine with being categorised with the likes of Gordon and Louis.

Will’s piss off at me because I insisted on exploring the implications of the Gaia hypothesis on the Iron sulfate thread. He never cottoned on that I was showing that following the Gaia allegory to its logical conclusion destroys its usefulness as a conservationist’s spiritual inspiration. I’m afraid the boy, although good hearted, doesn’t do a lot homework before pushing the submit button. This is his third ad hom attack on me and I have yet to ad hom him back.

Perhaps, Will would like to move on from grudge mode? Certainly, Louis, Gordon, as well as Kieran and Cohenite have all have heated disagreements in the past, but I would never Ad Hom the plasma-universe man and I highly respect the opinions of the others too.
😉

The Creep, now that’s a whole different kettle of fish. Perhaps before your time, Will.

They seem to want to nip the experiments with cyclical pattern forecasting in the bud. One wonders why such lack of curiosity exists in what surely must be two of our most open and inquiring minds?

A hypothesis is only as good as its testable predictions. What’s there to be afraid of?

If NT and Luke are so sure cyclical analysis is the path to “treachery, sharp knives and false promises” then one would think they would wish ol’ Bob Carter and his mates well while smirking all the way to the bank. Certainly, the AGW hypothesis makes no testable predictions that haven’t already been falsified or are too distant to be testable. Or maybe Luke and NT can propose a testable prediction of the AGW hypothesis that has or is about to come to pass?

Speaking of the bank. I wonder why the AGW peanut gallery has ignored this howler:

There is a fundamental problem with the GCM approach favored by the IPCC….even if we did have adequate computing power and understood climate well enough to mathematically model it, we’d have to be living in a fundamentally different kind of universe for our models to forecast from an initial state anything more than their own future.

I know Cohenite or Kieran could better explain to Luke why GCMs will never come of age as forecasting tools than I.

Once the decision has been made to follow scientific evidence, as opposed to science-worker sentiment, then everything points to cooling and nothing points the other way. Supposing we don’t get cooling? Well we will get cooling but supposing we don’t. It will still be the case that right now all evidence points to cooling and nothing says otherwise.

Just thinking out loud Wes – applying some of the same tests to Bob’s hypothesis as Bob would apply to us. You shouldn’t see everything as automatically blocking the argument.

BTW – like Bob’s cooling since 1998 – a current global cooling announcement is strategically pretty good for the anti-AGW campaign. High risk. But 1998 paid off eh?

But Wes – if you’re in search of some quality debate – it’s hard to find here. If you want to do some science discussion it’s very difficult if everyone interested in AGW is branded as a lefty commie hell bent on destroying western civilisation. I recently tried to get through on some basic principles with Jan (not picking on Jan either) but the ability to answer questions and discuss isn’t great. (He says as prepares to be swept away in an ad hom tsunami)

“That’s what I love… it is not enough to try and discredit AGW, but oh no it is now “Global Cooling” again!!! Isn’t that one of the key arguments against AGW that in the 1970s some fringe scientists scared people in to thinking it was going to cool. In thirty years they will be trying to claim AGW is false and they will say “But in 2008 scientists thought it was cooling” and bloody Carter will be referenced once again.”

Matt you are a complete blockhead mate. A total idiot. Why enter debate when you don’t have the capacity. Because there is no argument above. The physical world is not influenced by idiotic non-arguments like what you have above. Where is the argument.

Look dopey. The fact is that evidence points to cooling. Not warming. Cooling. What you have written above doesn’t relate to any evidence whatsoever. You’re a twit. A dim bulb. A blockhead. You don’t even know what to be reading. Why link to that idiot Brook? He’d have to have a brain transplant and die and be born again twice before he made good with any evidence for him mindless crap.

thanks for the kind thoughts – I’m not too fussed with Will Nitschke – he has an interesting web-print as well – but the pompous ad homs are not needed here – I find it is the usual case with computer engineers/programmers – they have delusions of misplaced grandeur. The only computer programmers I respect are those who code programs in machine language.

Henry Bauer wrote an interesting book in 1995 about the myth of the scientific method – something I need to read up on.

“I reject it on first principles that its isn’t a scientific theory to start with.”

That’s the problem. To apply your definition of “scientific” without understanding the subject or understanding it only fractionally… Epistemology and history and philosophy of science is a specific academic discipline of which you have demonstrated no knowledge or understanding of whatsoever. = crank

This is exactly as silly as NT lecturing everyone who will read him, on climatology when he has no technical training on the subject, and barely grasps what he reads off the Realclimate website anyway… = naive fanatic

Everyone is so intent on taking a position and “winning” the argument, that getting to the truth rationally seems to be rather secondary to the one-upmanship.

This idiot Matt B actually seems to think that nature will make a compromise bid between what alarmists are saying and what normal people are saying. Matt B seems to think, on account of him being a brainless twit, that reality arbitrates between human disputes.

Matt. You dummy. Its about evidence!!!! No alarmist has any evidence whatsoever for industrial-CO2 causing a world-wide warming problem. Not Mr Baldyman or anyone else. Got that yet dummy?

So we go with the evidence. And the evidence says cooling. The planet does not respond to leftist lunacy and ambit claims you drooling retard.

Imagine linking to Brook???? Presumably you’ve read his site? Have you tried to shake him down for some evidence? If you not banned you haven’t done so.

the scientific method is dependent on deducing explanations from previously determed empirical facts.

As I have a couple of science degrees, work as an exploration geologist in which testing of hypotheses is routine practice suggests your understanding of science is incomplete.

Climate is part and parcel of geology, and the geological record remains as problematical as it ever has in terms of what caused past climatic changes. It is an area of interesting disputation. I find it amusing that climate science ignores the geological record.

As for “Epistemology and history and philosophy of science is a specific academic discipline of which you have demonstrated no knowledge or understanding of whatsoever. = crank”

We are not discussing this at all here – so calling me a crank is indeed a case of cognitive dissonance on your part.

luke; I wouldn’t ad hom you; you are obviously a self-effacing chap(?); anyway, that Ken Matthews link begins with the declaration that “Climate change is real”; you really can’t go any further with that unless you want to explore the myriad elements of ineffable nonsense of Steven Guilbeault’s description of ‘Global warming’. Wes makes a good point about cycles and the prediction limitations of the GCMs; climate is both chaotic and complex; the dilemma for AGW is that it is asserting unique current circumstances in respect of humanity’s contribution to climate and similtaneously seeking to generate predictions on the basis of this novelty; you cannot Hurst scale that to any level of meaning which is why Hansen’s prophecies are so ludicrous; the dilemma for me is that I support any scientific enquiry into better understanding and ultimately controlling ‘nature’ for the general prosperity of humanity; I think AGW science, however, is going to blacken the brand of science for some time.

That therefore makes you an expert in all academic fields including those you have not studied…?

Learn something about epistemology and history and philosophy of science – it is a full academic course in its own right BTW – and not just the 1 or 2 lectures you may have spent on the subject 20 years ago that you might vaguely now recall, and for which the material is now obsolete anyway – then you talk about it — once you know what you’re talking about. (sigh)

Scientists tend to be arrogant SOB’s at the best of times — sometimes that’s good and sometimes that’s bad. In your case, and in the case of most of the alarmist true believers, that’s bad.

Here are some symptoms which will help you work out who the cranks are

“have identified seven indicators that a scientific claim lies well outside the bounds of rational scientific discourse. Of course, they are only warning signs — even a claim with several of the signs could be legitimate.

1. The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media. The integrity of science rests on the willingness of scientists to expose new ideas and findings to the scrutiny of other scientists. Thus, scientists expect their colleagues to reveal new findings to them initially. An attempt to bypass peer review by taking a new result directly to the media, and thence to the public, suggests that the work is unlikely to stand up to close examination by other scientists.

One notorious example is the claim made in 1989 by two chemists from the University of Utah, B. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, that they had discovered cold fusion — a way to produce nuclear fusion without expensive equipment. Scientists did not learn of the claim until they read reports of a news conference. Moreover, the announcement dealt largely with the economic potential of the discovery and was devoid of the sort of details that might have enabled other scientists to judge the strength of the claim or to repeat the experiment. (Ian Wilmut’s announcement that he had successfully cloned a sheep was just as public as Pons and Fleischmann’s claim, but in the case of cloning, abundant scientific details allowed scientists to judge the work’s validity.)

Some scientific claims avoid even the scrutiny of reporters by appearing in paid commercial advertisements. A health-food company marketed a dietary supplement called Vitamin O in full-page newspaper ads. Vitamin O turned out to be ordinary saltwater.

2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work. The idea is that the establishment will presumably stop at nothing to suppress discoveries that might shift the balance of wealth and power in society. Often, the discoverer describes mainstream science as part of a larger conspiracy that includes industry and government. Claims that the oil companies are frustrating the invention of an automobile that runs on water, for instance, are a sure sign that the idea of such a car is baloney. In the case of cold fusion, Pons and Fleischmann blamed their cold reception on physicists who were protecting their own research in hot fusion.

3. The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection. Alas, there is never a clear photograph of a flying saucer, or the Loch Ness monster. All scientific measurements must contend with some level of background noise or statistical fluctuation. But if the signal-to-noise ratio cannot be improved, even in principle, the effect is probably not real and the work is not science.

Thousands of published papers in para-psychology, for example, claim to report verified instances of telepathy, psychokinesis, or precognition. But those effects show up only in tortured analyses of statistics. The researchers can find no way to boost the signal, which suggests that it isn’t really there.

4. Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal. If modern science has learned anything in the past century, it is to distrust anecdotal evidence. Because anecdotes have a very strong emotional impact, they serve to keep superstitious beliefs alive in an age of science. The most important discovery of modern medicine is not vaccines or antibiotics, it is the randomized double-blind test, by means of which we know what works and what doesn’t. Contrary to the saying, “data” is not the plural of “anecdote.”

5. The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries. There is a persistent myth that hundreds or even thousands of years ago, long before anyone knew that blood circulates throughout the body, or that germs cause disease, our ancestors possessed miraculous remedies that modern science cannot understand. Much of what is termed “alternative medicine” is part of that myth.

Ancient folk wisdom, rediscovered or repackaged, is unlikely to match the output of modern scientific laboratories.

6. The discoverer has worked in isolation. The image of a lone genius who struggles in secrecy in an attic laboratory and ends up making a revolutionary breakthrough is a staple of Hollywood’s science-fiction films, but it is hard to find examples in real life. Scientific breakthroughs nowadays are almost always syntheses of the work of many scientists.

7. The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation. A new law of nature, invoked to explain some extraordinary result, must not conflict with what is already known. If we must change existing laws of nature or propose new laws to account for an observation, it is almost certainly wrong.

I began this list of warning signs to help federal judges detect scientific nonsense. But as I finished the list, I realized that in our increasingly technological society, spotting voodoo science is a skill that every citizen should develop.

Robert L. Park is a professor of physics at the University of Maryland at College Park and the director of public information for the American Physical Society. He is the author of Voodoo Science: The Road From Foolishness to Fraud (Oxford University Press, 2002).”

Well i suppose i should acknowledge, if it hasn’t already been apparent on Jennifer’s blog, that i’ve spent most of my life studying visual art and culture. From this perspective and from early childhood i’ve always understood science to be external to culture full stop and quite the most humbling experience we should adopt. For this reason it is always worth contemplating again and again what Richard Feynman says ….
“Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”

Science for most of the 20th century was largely about belief in specific causality, which tends to be not unlike the cosy belief in a specific religion, or fashion or culture which can only be maintained by restricting experience. How else can we explain the stooopidity of this finite big bang nonsense? However with the internet as a global hyperlink to a 360 degrees meeting place, are we not seeing the unbinding of tightly held cosy, worship systems to an open, democratic infinite meta-narrative always connected ….. lateral plus lineal and neither a system but an environment. This has intensified the contradictions carried by the old traditional cocksure, mainstream media causing millions to question traditional “cosy” beliefs.

Fortunately, the result of all this outside influence will be the development of a new international philosophy free from the contradictions with a move to demystify science because it is not worship anymore but the love to find out for oneself with a great deal of suspended judgement i.e. general causality. i.e the bigger picture.

When I look at the aa index of geomagnetic activity I simply see as clear as day that our largest plasma discharge formation, the sun drives earth’s climate ….. it gives the best indication of what has happened since 1884, is better than sun spot numbers and solar radiation. AND yes, the aa index as a measure of the earth’s geomagnetic stability is correct BUT our earth has a strong internal magnetic field. However, does it occur to obsessed warmers that the solar wind is able to modify this field, creating a cavity called the magnetosphere? Just what do confined AGWers think this cavity does to the surface of the earth? Do you know that it is filled with plasma much of which originates from sunnyboy? Would this influence climate, perhaps?

My chief point here is the strange thing that there are exceptions and of course my humble understanding is that prediction is ever more complicated than one can contemplate because there are NO experts.

About time you were outed as well, don’t you think, but alas you have already crossed your Rubicon, so expecting you to fess up personally isn’t one of the options. Perhaps your status is such that doing so would be equivalent to constructing mountains out of anthills, metaphorically that is.

Epistemology is:
–>
“–noun
a branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge.
Origin:
1855–60; < Gk epistm(ē) knowledge” Thats from dictionary.com or this from Wikipedia (sorry to use Wikipedia)

“It is a branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope (limitations) of knowledge.” <–

A contributor to a blog on Real Climate brilliantly described the way denialists argue on the subject of climate change as an epistemological breakdown. Even if you object to being labeled that way you must admit its a brilliant decription that could be applied to the way many arguments and debates are carried out in our society.

You are, quite frankly, a mischievous little twit – what on earth would a geoscientist beavering away in soft rocks need to chat up the media on global cooling during the 1970’s for?

Given Schneider’s position of global warming now, and global cooling then, and then taking Carter’s contra stand, I would have though he might have been batting for global warming then, and global cooling now.

“Given Schneider’s position of global warming now, and global cooling then, and then taking Carter’s contra stand, I would have though he might have been batting for global warming then, and global cooling now”

if what you are saying is accurate then is that all Carter is, a professional contarian, regardles of the issue or evidence? If I want a professional contarian all I need to do is go down to my local pub here in London, stand at the bar and as I’m ordering a drink mention how I’m originally from Australia and someone will take it upon themselves to tell me what the truth is about my home country and then spend the next two hours contradicting any evidence I put to them about god’s ‘own. This of course depends what mood I’m in.

As you cannot find any evidence, nor I, for any public utterance made by Bob Carter during the 1970’s, (I think he and I are the same age), then there might be a good reason for it. Both of us were probably unimportant, hard working, young geoscientists with head down, nose to the grinding stone trying to gain enough experience to know what we were doing professionally. I don’t think any of the media would have taken any notice of either of us.

So your question remain a piece of mschievousness character assassination.

If by using socialism in the context of the UK then I can imagine a few labor politicians here coughing with helpless laughter at that. But you’re right things are uncertain here as the UK (like Australia) has been living off the tick for so long. But you might be best placed to tell me. Isn’t Australia going to end up the same way as the UK is now, just later, because off our reliance on selling off raw materials. If so perhaps there might be some cheap places for sale in Perth soon. I do get the impression there is a certain amount of smugness in some quarters back home o the misplaced idea that our smarts have kept us from what is happening elsewhere.

Lol @ naive fanatic! oh will in your Ivory tower of a planet of 2 billion fanatics on each side, and your one wise true self in the middle of it all:) Or was I jsut making up the numbers? I’m such a freaking moderate on climate that only on this blog could I come across as a fanatic!

And Graeme – I’ve obviously touched a nerve there sorry mate – better pop a few more blood pressure pills… maybe ring the bell so nursey comes to calm you down eh? Seriously what a pile of immature ranting – do you carry tissues to clean the spittle off your computer every 5 minutes? obviously you forgot and posted pretty much the same thing twice… sorry I must have really upset your afternoon sleep with all that bitterness welling up. FUnny stuff you crazy old festering nutbag;)

I did enjoy reading the paper by Compo and Sardeshmukh. Very thought provoking.

Do you agree with their assertions then, that the ocean has warmed, and the land has warmed during the last few decades?
(“The general warming trend of near-surface temperatures since the late 19th century appears to have intensified since the mid-1970’s and emerged unambiguously from a background of simulated natural variability after about 1990”)

Should you inform Bob Carter that his opening statement about general cooling in all the indicators is directly contradicted by the evidence?

What is the increase in heat content of the climate system over the last decade? In joules.

Unfortunately I can’t get at the paper, which is frustrating — I’m very interested in SSTs and the Folland & Parker ‘bucket correction’. Could you summarise, please — just the method used and a brief summary of the results. Here will do fine. TIA.

sod,
1998 is a great starting point becuase the AGW promo industry made it the bell weather year- the year the fingerprints were on the smoking gun of man made climate apocalypse.
You are stuck with it.
Like the delusion you guys sell about the European heat wave, you live by promoting weather events as *proof*, you die by the same.
Hansen is your #1 guy, your Mr. Big, your team captain. No supporter or promoter of AGW gets to disown him.
I blame on Hansen only that he has never had the integrity to admit he was way off base, and has instead sought to make his apocalyptic obsessions pass off as science.
But you deal with him. He is yours.
To ignore the lack of warming worldwide is to simply strut around like the naked emperor.
You guys predicted storm strength and were wrong.
You guys predicted hot spots that aren’t there.
You guys predicted warming oceans that are not.
You used a hockey stick that was fabricated.
Yet you persist in refusing to even consider that maybe the climate is more complex than Hansen/IPCC claim it is and that maybe they ahve important parts of it wrong.
Why?
I am not confused. I am enjoying your performance.
Spin on, good sir.

Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the IPCC, reluctantly admitted to Reuters in January 2008 that there has been no warming so far in the 21st Century. Jennifer reported it here. Since January 2008 the trend has been down.

Sod,
1998 is a great year to start a trend for the last 10 years or so.
I frankly think any trend of less than 60 years or so is pretty pointless in climate. But your side decided to reduce the focus down to seasonal variations.
Why pick any year as a starting point? Again, becuase 1998 was the alleged start fer sure of what was predicted to be a long trend leading to the Earth becoming uninhabitable.
From a cliamte pov, the climate does not give a rat’s rear end what we call a year, does it?
You AGW guys are left sputtering around starting points, and hoping to ignore the long list of failures of the apocalyptic predictions.
Dissembling works for the high level guys like Hansen, because they can get away with imperiousness and just ignore their failures, so far.

Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the U.N. Panel that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, said he would look into the apparent temperature plateau so far this century.

“One would really have to see on the basis of some analysis what this really represents,” he told Reuters, adding “are there natural factors compensating?” for increases in greenhouse gases from human activities.

He added that skeptics about a human role in climate change delighted in hints that temperatures might not be rising. “There are some people who would want to find every single excuse to say that this is all hogwash,” he said.

because since the turn of the 21st century all real world, long-term climate indicators have turned downwards.

so you can NOT use 1998, because it was before the ” turn of the 21st century”. this is not difficult, is it?

From a cliamte pov, the climate does not give a rat’s rear end what we call a year, does it?

you might want to google “climate” and “seasons”. you will notice that there is a strong connection between climate and year.
your lack of understanding is embarassing. please do more reading and less posting.

Brad; don’t be snarky; I saw the References heading and gave up; how was I to know that the author’s name was tucked away after the References? Any way, you didn’t read my comment about the 1976 and 1998 step-ups did you, but at least we got a WFT graph from sod; hurrah!; here are the step-ups; 1976;

No, epistemology is a specific sub-branch of philosophy focused on understanding the nature of truth and meaning and how we can ‘know what we know’. Philosophy of science is a particular academic discipline focused on studying scientific methods and practices as currently conducted, and historically. There are probably better definitions out there than mine, if you google them.

“Btw, I notice your name links to an office supply store. Can you get me a good deal on a scanner/fax machine? It has to port with Linnux though.”

I have no association with an office supplies store, although sometimes people get mixed up and send me emails asking for office supplies. You’re not the first to make that mistake.

Sod,
Do you see what the AGW community is down to?
Quibbling over a starting point to defend what they claimed was a relentless, dramatic clear pattern of CO2 and temps.
Hansen in 1988 made a set of predictions, A, B, C. They were all wrong.
The AGW promo industry was all over the sea ice, but that is not so good now- those pesky currents and all.
The AGW claim was, that unless the weather agrees with us, it does not count, but people are shivering and tired of hearing that one ad frigidarus, so to speak.
Now we are down to your team captain betting on a two year pop in temps. If 1998 is no good for a starting point, then why is 2011 a good point? Oh yeah, because then it will agree with Hansen.
The real pitiful truth is that the entire temp data set is not only corrupt and faulty, but the result Hansen is telling us *proves* we are near a Venusian tipping point is in reality a sparrow’s fart of change.
But we need skeptics tried and jailed, taxes raised, coal industry shut down, and ugly windmills all over the place because of it.
And when will any AGW promoter ever show in history that anything like a run away tipping point driven by CO2 has ever actually, you know, happened?
Your side has gone from great climate prophets to weather guessers, hoping to get lucky enough in a coupl;e of years to keep people fooled long enough.
And to work feverishly behind the scenes to get the great political clowns to sign the friggin’ check.

“Here are some symptoms which will help you work out who the cranks are

“have identified seven indicators that a scientific claim lies well outside the bounds of rational scientific discourse. Of course, they are only warning signs — even a claim with several of the signs could be legitimate.”

“1. The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media.”

AGW was not pitched directly at the media. The work is published largely in academic journals…

“2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work.”

That would apply more to scientists who disagree with AGW than AGW scientists, as they are mainstream at present.

“3. The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection.”

With a definition like this, virtually all of current physics and cosmology must also be pseudo-scientific…

“Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal.”

That is the starting point for most scientific enterprises. Are you arguing that medical case studies have no scientific validity? There is a place for such evidence, but obviously the results of well controlled experiments have more power in a number of respects.

“5. The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries.”

This is exactly the reason why relativity, evolutionary theory, etc., are so credible. They have withstood 50+ years of criticism. One would expect they’ll largely withstand centuries of criticism also.

“6. The discoverer has worked in isolation.”

Kepler, Einstein, Newton…

“The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation.”

Kepler, Einstein, Newton…

The problem with such lists is that every one of your rules of thumb can be applied easily to mainstream science.

You may happen to believe that AGW is bad science, and possibly it is, but it is done by scientists and it makes testable predictions. Like it or not, it’s science.

BTW, my definition of ‘crank’ would simply be someone who speaks with confidence on technical topics he has no expertise in, who at the very least makes no attempt to hedge his assertions or express his uncertainties.

Note: The climate scientists who publish 50% of their work on climate change only account for 79 individuals of the 3146 who completed the survey which only covered the US and a bit of Canada. I’m sure had they added Oceania and Europe the figures may have been different but who cares?

There were only two questions:

1. When compared with pre-1800s
levels,
do you think that mean global temperatures
have generally risen, fallen, or
remained relatively constant?
2. Do you think human activity is a significant
contributing factor in changing
mean global temperatures?

to answer No to question 1 you’d have to be brain dead.

Most people would answer yes to question 2 although the degree of influence is what the damn debate is all about!

At first the two questions you posted struck me as reasonable. However, after another moment’s thought and if the survey was aimed at scientists, than the word “significant” has a particular technical meaning perhaps not obvious the public: statistical significance.

Something can have [statistical] significance… if that is the case, then even I would have to answer ‘yes’ to both questions and I am not exactly regarded in most circles as a global warming alarmist.

It is hard to believe that the person who constructed this survey could not be aware of this fact. In which case the survey is intentionally deceptive. Typical behaviour I’ve seen repeatedly, unfortunately…

“Many researchers use the word “significant” to describe a finding that may have decision-making utility to a client. From a statistician’s viewpoint, this is an incorrect use of the word. However, the word “significant” has virtually universal meaning to the public. Thus, many researchers use the word “significant” to describe a difference or relationship that may be strategically important to a client (regardless of any statistical tests). In these situations, the word “significant” is used to advise a client to take note of a particular difference or relationship because it may be relevant to the company’s strategic plan. The word “significant” is not the exclusive domain of statisticians and either use is correct in the business world. Thus, for the statistician, it may be wise to adopt a policy of always referring to “statistical significance” rather than simply “significance” when communicating with the public.”

“Significant” to any normal working scientist means “has a measurable effect” (regardless of size).

In that context, I am not aware of a single (non-crank) sceptic who would not be forced to answer ‘yes’ to both questions. The style of the questions (if you have stated them accurately) is definitely suggestive that the person constructing the survey was not very confident in what the response of the scientists may have been. Interesting.

Is that not a good thing… that the person asking the questions was not sure what the response would be?

IMO (and yeah I gather I’m a naive findamentalist) is that the survey trumps Inhofe and Oregon… but that is not saying much.

I like the survey to be honest (not that it was sent to me I’ll ahve to get on to my publicists on that one) – I’d have been interested had some questions probed the future… i.e. do they think that the IPCC projections are accurate. Do they think a cooling phase is about to occur.

Sure I know I know science is not about consensus but I think it is still genuinely interesting to know where scientists stand – ie what their opinions are based upon the so called “scientific facts” they come across.

And Cathy – while it is a fair call that “The debate is not about what people think, but about what the factual evidence shows”…. unfortunately as humans we can only ever consider what people think about what the factual evidence shows. Without human consideration there are no “facts” or even “evidence”. You can only ever get what someone THINKS about these “facts”.

Can anyone point me in the direction of where Bob Carter is sourcing his data to back up the comment that “global atmospheric temperature reached a peak in 1998, has not warmed since 1995 and, has been cooling since 2002”? I’m yet to find a graph online that supports this claim.

Funny:) What I meant was are we not tiring of surveys that are only asked because people already know the answers to the questions already.

I’d wager your classic Chinese Government has never asked a survey where they were not 100% certain of the answer… given they probably had written the answer first.

And just to expand to Cathy, in fact for the most of us (myself included) we can only really consider what somebody else things about the facts… so our answer is what we think about what somebody else thinks about the facts… unless we are all to become genuine experts in Climate Science in which case there would be nobody doing productive work thus no greenhouse gases being emitted in the 1st place.

“What I meant was are we not tiring of surveys that are only asked because people already know the answers to the questions already.”

I’m tiring of them. They are contemptible.

“we can only really consider what somebody else things about the facts… ”

You or I may not be able to argue the technical points, but it’s important to at least review what the technical debates are and how they evolve. It’s also important to determine predictions made and check them against reality as best you can. Our court system rules all the time on ostensibly technical matters. It’s not just a matter of deciding a priori who is right and then agreeing with that particular viewpoint.

“This is exactly the reason why relativity, evolutionary theory, etc., are so credible. They have withstood 50+ years of criticism. One would expect they’ll largely withstand centuries of criticism also.”

Wrong. Back to philosophy of science 101, Will. It’s in the Epistemology wing.

The only reason that a hypothesis is credible is if it makes useful observations and predictions that can and are verified as correct using the procedures of scientific method. Critics and their criticisms have little relevancy to the scrupulous application of scientific methodology..

Let’s please hope that the present theories of evolution and relativity do NOT stand through another couple of centuries, but are superseded as more useful paradigms offering more precise and functional predictions, that lead to expanded horizon of inquiry, arise. One shouldn’t expect stasis in science, but progress.

Likewise, critics and supporters of the AGW hypothesis can rant and rave all they want, the hypothesis will ultimately stand or fall on the merits of its predictions.

“BTW, my definition of ‘crank’ would simply be someone who speaks with confidence on technical topics he has no expertise in, who at the very least makes no attempt to hedge his assertions or express his uncertainties.”

Careful for what you wish for, Will. This is a blog comment section, it’s open to the public, no one can be an expert in more than a tiny part of experience. No one has to show their diplomas to post here. I’ve noticed you comment on some things (such as the nature of art & science) which reveal your lack of expertise, but not of confidence. Moreover, I haven’t noticed you being big on hedging your punts.

By your own definition, you are a crank. But I would never call you one. Nor would I hold commenters on a blog to your stuffy standard. Everyone should feel welcome to make silly comments on anything. Lighten up, Will, have some fun. 😉

“The only reason that a hypothesis is credible is if it makes useful observations and predictions that can and are verified as correct using the procedures of scientific method.”

Yeah, that’s kind of simplistic rubbish you hear on these forums all the time. That viewpoint was espoused by Popper. Since then we’ve had other significant thinkers such as Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend and a dozen other thinkers since then who have made significant academic contributions to the field. This is a perfect example of someone who knows almost nothing about a subject (except what you might have read on the net or a couple of lectures back in uni) who then presumes to lecture on the topic…

Popper’s ideas are important, but the picture is vastly more complicated than you currently understand.

I don’t comment on art as I have very little interest in the general snobbery that typically surrounds that topic, but I have no objection to it, just find some of those who want to lecture on it a little hard to swallow. If you want to make statements that art is “another way of knowing” that is *also* rational, then you are intruding into my field of expertise… but I don’t think anyone has to be an expert in any particular scientific or non-scientific field to point out fuzzy thinking when they see it.

Will: ‘Yeah, that’s kind of simplistic rubbish you hear on these forums all the time. That viewpoint was espoused by Popper. Since then we’ve had other significant thinkers such as Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend and a dozen other thinkers since then who have made significant academic contributions to the field. This is a perfect example of someone who knows almost nothing about a subject (except what you might have read on the net or a couple of lectures back in uni) who then presumes to lecture on the topic…

Popper’s ideas are important, but the picture is vastly more complicated than you currently understand.’

Um Will, no need to be patronising just because a handful of lightweights from Berkeley, Frankfurt and Woop Woop have made academic careers out of biting at the heels of the giant, Karl Popper. Look at Kuhn and Feyerabend: They’ll be remembered for a pithy slogan, but by whom? The Royal Academy of Management Consultants perhaps? The rest fall into that unfortunate category known as ‘post-War Continental philosophers’ about whom enough has been said.

But by all means don’t forget Alan Sokal in your list of thinkers who have made ‘significant contributions’ to muddying the waters.

Max “Can anyone point me in the direction of where Bob Carter is sourcing his data to back up the comment that “global atmospheric temperature reached a peak in 1998, has not warmed since 1995 and, has been cooling since 2002″?

There are many ways you can interpret that graph. Some scientists consider a fluctuation of 0.25 C to be meaningless since it could fall within a range of natural fluctuation or error. The graph, which is based on UAH satellite data (Gavin Schmidt’s old technology), plainly shows the trend increasing circa 1995 after the Mt. Pinatubo cooling phase. I presume Carter is interpreting the warming after 1995 to be the effect of the impending El Nino and not attributable to global warming.

The 1997/98 El Nino spike threw things out of kilter and it took till 2002 for the atmosphere to recover. Then the trend flattened out and started in a cooling direction. Either way, you’re looking at a miniscule warming in the atmosphere, which had been showing no warming between 1979 and 1995, till that El Nino happened.

Gosh, I’m sorry. Why don’t you explain to us why close adherence to scientific method ( i.e. critical rationalism) is simplistic rubbish, please use the topic of AGW theory as your example. That would be more helpful and interesting then whinging ad homs.

Now that you brought up Kuhn, Lakatos and Feyerabend, perhaps you should explain to everyone how (and why) their ideas need to be understood in relation to the AGW hypothesis.

Personally, I try to keep it to the basics in blog debates on the validity of the AGW hypothesis. You know, give us a prediction and let’s see if we can test it. It seems if we could all be as simple minded as Popper that would be an improvement. But, I’m sure we could all use your help here.

Will Nitschke “You may happen to believe that AGW is bad science, and possibly it is, but it is done by scientists and it makes testable predictions. Like it or not, it’s science”.

If you said virtual science, I’d agree, but it sure ain’t science the way it’s normally done. The moment you start programming the atmosphere into a computer, based on your interpretation of reality, and using assumptions about physics that are wrong or questionable, you are not practicing science according to the traditional scientific method.

A basic tenet of the scientific method is that the experiment be reproducable by independent others. I realize that is not always possible. For example, not many people have linear accelerators to investigate collisions between atomic particles. So, we are at the mercy of a few scientists who do have access to those devices. That’s hardly the case in the atmosphere or on the planet. Maybe inside the planet, where we can’t observe directly, things may become murky but there’s no excuse for obfuscation out in the open.

If mathematicians and those with interests outside their immediate discipline, want to get involved in matters related to physics, they should take care to understand basic physics. Many of them have only a cursory background in physics and feel free to interpret phenomena based on their limited understanding. The physics behind atmospheric theory, which is being programmed into computer models, is being bent and massaged to arrive at a desired outcome. When the model predictions are high, theories about aerosols cooling the atmosphere are examined rather than looking at the lack of understanding of the atmosphere that went into programming the model.

The AGW theory is based on many assumptions that are proving to be wrong. In normal science, an investigation would be launched to see what is wrong with the model. For example, when models are programmed with known data about the past, they fail to reproduce it faithfully, even when the models are tweaked.

When an organization like the IPCC admits their favoured modeling paradigm is being challenged by directly observed data from satellites, they ignore the real data and move on. Later, they use innuendo to discredit the satellite data. That’s called pseudo-science because it’s deceptive. The IPCC are a political organization bent on presenting one paradigm to explain global warming. In the several scenarios they offered, several that lead to global cooling were rejected.

How does one independently verify the AGW theory? You don’t. You take the word of people who agree with the paradigm and suffer their derision if you don’t. I’m used to a science where a scientist puts out a legitimate argument and other scientists agree with or critique the argument based on experimentation or observation. When computer modelers tell us the planet is warming, and John Christy comes along with measured data showing it is not, he is told to go suck eggs. If you call that science, you have a very naive concept of what it is about.

If Christy approached a modeler and showed him his directly observed data, and the modeler said, “that’s interesting, let’s have a look and see what’s going on”, that would be science. When that modeler turns to Christy and says, “I don’t care, the model is right and the satellite data is wrong”, that’s arrogance and pseudo-science. When the atmospheric warming trend flattens out for 10 years, and the AGW crowd start moving the goal posts to explain it, that’s not science. If they said, “yikes…something is wrong here, let’s have a look”, that would be science.

Good scientists don’t allow their egos to get in the way of observation and they certainly don’t resort to ad hom attacks and bafflegab to explain their failures. One of the best, Linus Pauling, admitted immediately when he was wrong, and even laughed at his mistakes. The man had no ego to speak of and genuine scientists like him are sorely missed in this day of arrogance.

“If Christy approached a modeler and showed him his directly observed data, and the modeler said, “that’s interesting, let’s have a look and see what’s going on”, “oh look here is the problem, sorry you’re misinterpreting both the data and the model, look this is what is actually going on” and Christy says “righyho” that would be science. When Christy turns to the scientists and says, “I don’t care my interpretation is right and you are wrong la la la la”, that’s arrogance and pseudo-science.”

Gordon – your comments on modelling are utterly laughable. You’re some dude on the intertubes having a little rant. Do you know any climate modellers and what they really do …. sigh …

And given that the UAH data have been gathered by multiple platforms, each with unique drifting instruments, time of day pass issues and so on …. your “confidence” in raw satellite data as some form of truth is equally laughable.

Do you know what Hadley’s current work program on modelling actually is?

Frankly Gordon – you’ve started with a political position and then worked back to rearrange a personal collection of trivial facts to suit yourself.

And given someone else had to sort out the UAH data that was improperly processed so when adjusted went from cooling to warming – excuse me while I barf in the corner…

Indeed what percentage of climate modellers are even making any public comment?

But anyway – as you were – continue ranting in ignorant bigoted bliss.

You have already told Cathy you don’t believe in science by direct observation, just second hand opinions. Naturally you would side with a Nintendo sim over directly observed data…

MattB January 21st, 2009 at 12:06 pm:

“…. unfortunately as humans we can only ever consider what people think about what the factual evidence shows. Without human consideration there are no “facts” or even “evidence”. You can only ever get what someone THINKS about these “facts”.

I say we vote on it. All in favor of an AGW apocalypse on the 7 of July 2049 say ‘AYE”

And the ayes have it. The science is settled.

Will, still waiting for you to explain to us post-Popperian scientific method, son.

no no no wes… what I said is there is no such thing as a pure unadulterated direct observation. Not that I would prefer 2nd hand opinions over direct observation. All we have are opinions… that is why people can look at the same data and get different results.

You ask 100 people to describe an event they all watched… you get 100 different stories… people will even report directly contradictory “facts” like colour of a jumper or the height of a person. That is just life. It is a tad mischevious of you to say I want 2nd hand opinions, when what I do is recognise the hard-wired realities of observations by humans.

you laugh – but you are spot on – science exists, but we vote for polititians who vote on science policy based on which science is in favour and then a show of hand in the party room and then in the house… If they think there wil be AGW apolalypse on that date then they will set policy accordingly. Science is not consensus, but the political decisions will always be based on political consensus… which may or may not reflect scientific consensus which may or may not prove to be correct science.

“…just because a handful of lightweights from Berkeley, Frankfurt and Woop Woop have made academic careers out of biting at the heels of the giant…”

Yeap, and some anonymous poster on the internet (yourself) has some sort of claim to authority such that in your judgement, these respected academics are to be dismissed? You have an inflated ego that is at least not in doubt.

“Look at Kuhn and Feyerabend: They’ll be remembered for a pithy slogan…”

Do I agree with every point they and others have made since Popper tackled this problem? No, of course not. In some cases they have over stated their arguments in my opinion, but they have contributed valuable insights into the problem of determining scientific certainty and you can see that play out in the real world every day.

So it goes everywhere on the internet, not just this forum. Why the disagreement? Because there are arguments over what the evidence is and how it is to be interpreted. Evidence requires establishing facts. Facts requirement measurements. Which facts are more important than others? How do we measure? What is being measured? How reliable are the measurements?

These are all legitimate issues raised both my AGW supporters AND sceptics. To think that one can wade into such a complex topic and take a Gods-eye-view of the issue, and decide which measurements, which facts, and which evidence is important, and which isn’t, and pronounce X has been falsified or not, is frankly absurd. Complex theories do not and never will have, simplistic falsifications.

But the subject will appear simplistic if your understanding of the issues are simplistic.

I’m a fan of Tractatus Logica Philosophicus too. However, maybe we should keep the esoteric subtleties out of 200-word posts on a blog. Otherwise, one sounds as if one is trying to obfuscate issues.

Stick to the the basics. We should pretend that we can actually “know” things and then proceed from there. Kind of like agreeing to chopping off the infinities and limiting the irrational numbers. Let’s agree that one data set is direct observation and another is an GCM scenario and nary the twain shall be confused. OK? ’cause when you start talking all philosophical about how do we know anything is really real, then I smell a Luke.

After all, we aren’t dealing with subatomic quantum physics or maths that are beyond the comprehension of the average uni educated layperson. Climatology is often a pretty straight forward macro-level science. Anyone can grasp the fundamental implications of the AGW hypothesis, and that’s what we should be on about.

“Stick to the the basics. We should pretend that we can actually “know” things and then proceed from there……”

No you and Matt ought not do this. If you are such philosophical incompetents that you have to admit that you know nothing you ought to be true to your limitations and listen to others who do know what they are talking about. You fall for radical skepticism in philosophy, you aren’t up to judging any controversial issues.

Matt B’s incompetence in philosophy is matched by his allergy to evidence:

“That’s what I love… it is not enough to try and discredit AGW, but oh no it is now “Global Cooling” again!!! Isn’t that one of the key arguments against AGW that in the 1970s some fringe scientists scared people in to thinking it was going to cool.”

Any excuse not to look at the evidence straight. First-year philosophy-boy-101 jive, press-ganged in as yet one more excuse never to look at the evidence. At no time will Matt B ever judge the evidence straight, unadorned and uninfluenced by scientifically unimportant matters.

Luke: “Do you know any climate modellers and what they really do …. sigh …”

Yeah, climate modellers try to model abstractions.

What is climate? The physical state of a small part of the earth’s surface when looked at over an arbitrary 30 year period, or so we are led to believe.

A polar climate does not need to be defined by a 30 year cycle, let alone a deser, or temperate region. Rainshadow areas are also climates but if they dry up within a 30 year period are they then, er hmmmm.

Human abstractions cannot be quantified by the calculus of the physical sciences but like the economentric nincompoops, the climate nincompoops believe it is possible. It isn’t. If it were I would not be writing this.

It might exist in virtual reality, usually induced by an excess of caffeine, whether administered by the tea lady from her trolley from regulation tea or, shudder, coffee, by the scientific mediocrity employed from the savings stolen from the masses to determine policy to be enacted by the dullards we are forced to elect.

“…. unfortunately as humans we can only ever consider what people think about what the factual evidence shows. Without human consideration there are no “facts” or even “evidence”. You can only ever get what someone THINKS about these “facts”.”

People who question physical reality ought not to sit on railway tracks.

The problem with arguing idiots is that that generally they control the argument until you are forced to their level. Then they win by superior experience.

It is simply an unwinnable situation but worth pursuing here, if only to show the silent majority that there are alternatives to idiotic climate delusions. (not sure if I am being tautological with that phrase).

GCM modellers by definition are hardly caffeniated hyper-programmers – indeed they have to be at the top of their game in physics, meteorology, chemistry, remote sensing, modelling techniques and programming.

The ability to successfully model observations is the point of modelling. It indicates whether your by necessity human abstraction of biophysical processes does indeed “work”/validate.

A sledge comment suggesting that GCMs are some sort of Nintendo computer game belies the total lack of knowledge of the subject. Hence we don’t listen.

Please, by all means, inform us. How would you describe the central thrust of the AGW hypothesis? Please, frame it so it can be tested within our lifetimes.

I love it when Luke and Will tell me I’ve buggered it, but can’t explain how. It’s kind of like buggerus interruptus, it lacks authority.

Thanks for the heads up, Louis.

You’re right about the silent majority. Those who comment represent less than 1% of the traffic on any significant blog and of those less than 10% have anything useful to add other than providing convenient foils.

Those, like Luke and Will, who underestimate the intelligence of the audience, are judged accordingly, if silently. The best memes will be naturally sorted and selected for over the bluff & dodge, the ad homs and hectoring.

Someday, maybe Web 4.0, the audience will be able to give us thumbs up or down and banish the losers from the island. Until then, the hard slog goes on.

Wesley – now don’t bung it on – you were waxing lyrical just last week about the majesty of the cut and thrust of the debate here (I gagged incidentally) …. I’m not ad homming you. Otherwise I’d called you a dickhead. Intelligence of the audience here? – now don’t flatter yourself…

Wes “Those, like Luke and Will, who underestimate the intelligence of the audience, are judged accordingly, if silently….”

Now; Ive been thinking why this bit was the understatement of most recent contributions…
Luke “All instruments usually have issues. Save the tape measure when any problem is usually between the device and the operator….”

After missplacing all my tape measures some days back I tried to estimate the capacity of two different station wagons to accommodate a dining table and six chairs in the post Kingswood era.

Finding the whole collection of assorted tape measures hidden up in the kitchen should have made the task easy. but it didn’t. Calibrating the load and space measurements even with a handy tape lock hardly helped.

In the end, we start with the largest issue and shuffle the rest to fit a desired outcome. I bet trial and error wins every time with other moddling too

Yesterday we failed to lift a washing machine into the back seat of a Falcon sedan. This was only a 5 kg toploader and its top should have passed through the gap with the side door wide open. Varing angles of approach didn’t help either.

I doubt if some smart calculus could have convinced anyone the task was beyond us from the outset. Appearances are so decieving when extrapolating from the flat earth plot too.

“When an organization like the IPCC admits their favoured modeling paradigm is being challenged by directly observed data from satellites, they ignore the real data and move on. Later, they use innuendo to discredit the satellite data. That’s called pseudo-science because it’s deceptive. The IPCC are a political organization bent on presenting one paradigm to explain global warming. In the several scenarios they offered, several that lead to global cooling were rejected.”

Correction, the temperature is not directly observed by satellites, but inferred. TOA is directly observed, but the lower troposphere is a few layers down. It has to be inferred.

Unfortunately I can’t get at the paper, which is frustrating — I’m very interested in SSTs and the Folland & Parker ‘bucket correction’. Could you summarise, please — just the method used and a brief summary of the results. Here will do fine. TIA.

Anyone, with an open mind, who has read Bob Carter’s papers or watched his presentation on Utube would appreciate that he his a scientist of integrity. The abuse he is subject to for his views is quite atrocious.

Jennifer I think you should censor abuse.

One good thing about this global recession the BBC are not droning on night after night on Global Warming.

Anyone, with an open mind, who has read Bob Carter’s papers or watched his presentation on Utube would appreciate that he his a scientist of integrity. The abuse he is subject to for his views is quite atrocious.

he is NOT “abused”.

people are pointing out that he is WRONG on all accounts, and we are supporting it with hard facts.

Dr Tim Ball describes the tools of bullying – all or most of which have frequently been used on this blog by SJT, NT, and other anonymice as well as M’Luke;
The Tools of Bullying

The tools of bullying used against those who question the claim that humans are causing global warming include:
Expropriating the moral high ground of environmentalism.
Claiming that funding from some sources is tainted.
Questioning credentials of those who speak out against the hypothesis, but never mentioning it for those in support. Few ever ask about Gore’s credentials.

people are pointing out that he is WRONG on all accounts, and we are supporting it with hard facts.

In today’s Australian a Professor Michael Ashley from the Dept of Astrophysics at UNSW wrote a letter pointing out that Bob Carter was WRONG as you put it.

here’s an extract:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration did not report that “October in the US was marked by 63 record snowfalls and 115 lowest-ever temperatures”. This “fact” is a cherry-picked sample of weather stations from over 5600 across the US for one day, the 29th, in October. In fact, during October 2008 there were 430 new records set in the US for the highest maximum temperature, and the NOAA reported “the combined global land and ocean surface average temperature for October 2008 was the second warmest since records began in 1880”.

now you are aware of the dispute over the October figures from GISS when they inadvertently published the previous months figures for October but apparently the Professor isn’t, yet he has the audacity to attack Bob Carter in a major newspaper with total fallacy.

That’s the problem!! People like Prof Ashbey BELIEVE they are right and their religion of AGW is beyond question and anyone who dares to question it is automatically wrong.

now you are aware of the dispute over the October figures from GISS when they inadvertently published the previous months figures for October but apparently the Professor isn’t, yet he has the audacity to attack Bob Carter in a major newspaper with total fallacy.

That’s the problem!! People like Prof Ashbey BELIEVE they are right and their religion of AGW is beyond question and anyone who dares to question it is automatically wrong. </i<

i don t have time for a deep analysis at the moment, but the problem with the data was in RUSSIA, while the Prof. claims to be talking about the US.

Bob Carter argument’s do come across as simplistic, but he’s being judged on short utube clips, and tiny radio interviews and newspaper articles. I would expect his actual position is more nuanced, but my impression is that his main focus appears to be fighting on the political battlefront.

People aren’t happy with him quoting statements such as “no cooling since 1998” even if it’s true. The problem with the statement is the short time frame and the cherry picking of the start date. On the other hand, while AGW believers argue that 10 years is too short a period to measure a small signal in a noisy chaotic system, that doesn’t prevent characters such as Hansen predicting record breaking temperatures in a couple of years from now. So the BS is flying thick and fast in every direction. This part of the discussion is all political.

If the long term trend (let’s say 100 years) is the real indicator of where we are heading then the temperature rise should be around .05 to .06 per decade averaged.

The IPCC short-range prediction is 0.2 per decade. Which basically means we need to go up to around half degree more and within 10 years to meet forecast. That’s a tough call. If it happens, my scepticism will be gone. Until that happens, the arguments too and fro about warming, flat lining and cooling are all interesting from a human psychological perspective, but the bottom line is that the data remains ambiguous. Unless, of course, a better climate theory comes along to supersede AGW before then.

Well, Will Nitschke, if you think Bob Carter’s arguments are simplistic then you probably shouldn’t read this new paper on the warming of the Antartica, co-authored by everyone’s favourite hatchet-boy, Michael Mann; they use a new algorithm based on ‘observed’ SST increases to conclude that Antartica is warming; so we are left with a paradox; the Antartica is warming but expanding;

Did you manage to get a copy this latest Mannian Stats? I was going to download it after forking out $32US but might delay that if someone else has already done it. I smell dodgy stats again. Steve McIntyre I both, for basically the same reason but totally independently, got interested in this stuff years ago when, based on our mining industry experience, thought the Hockey Stick was “interesting” and how did they derive that shape type of logic. The rest is history.

My radar just beeped when I read the Barry Brook stuff on the Oz this morning and found the Nature Abstract.

Bob Carter and and David Archibald ( “The combination of a 0.3° response to the current La Nina and the usual 0.3° decline from January to May will result in a 0.6° decline to May 2009 to a result of 0.4° below the long term average.”

Thanks Gordon and Sod for pointing me in the direction of the UAH graph – interesting reading.
But I’m wondering why this graphic isn’t widely accepted or publicised in the global warming debate – political theories aside, is there a criticism from the scientific community about its accuracy or methodology? I’m neither here nor there on the global warming vs cooling debate, but am just trying to understand why this graphic differs so markedly from those put forward by the IPCC and co.

Wes – You’re only interested in having a politico-philosophical rant. Your knowledge or ability to discuss the science is minimal. So it’s a waste of time isn’t it – we could argue here for hours and we’ll never get anything back except home spun philosophy from you? Trademark of the pseudo-sceptics – interminable waffle …

Just like the his previous commentaries, Bob Carter gets it wromg again. After exposing himself to ridicule over last years “tropical hot spot” debacle, now he’s prepared to indicate global cooling as the new mantra of the high preists of denial. Seeing that there is not one, I repeat not one, major temperature series which indicates a global cooling trend, where is his nonsense non-science originating??

“Well…if you think Bob Carter’s arguments are simplistic then you probably shouldn’t read this new paper on the warming of the Antartica, co-authored by everyone’s favourite hatchet-boy, Michael Mann; they use a new algorithm based on ‘observed’ SST increases to conclude that Antartica is warming; so we are left with a paradox; the Antartica is warming but expanding”

I’ve glanced at it. Don’t see it’s relevance to the debate. Or to put it another way, either side can this spin this study in either direction. If it’s co-authorised by Mann I would be cautious as he seems to be a scientist that puts his activism before his intellectual integrity.

“Will, are you saying that you think the AGW hypothesis is the best explanation for the climatological historical record over the last two thousand years? If so please explain why.”

Putting aside the stupidity of your statement (we have not been pumping large volumes of CO2 into the atmosphere for the last two thousand years, more like the last 50), what I am saying — which is burdened by the fact that it’s factually accurate — is that the climatological community regards AGW as the best theory for the upward tick in temperatures for the recent past.

“Still waiting to hear why Karl Popper is a simpleminded sod whose version of scientific method has been “superseded.”

As hard as this may for your ego to believe, it’s not my lot in life to tear you a new arsehole every time you say something extraordinary stupid (as opposed to just stupid). If you have any genuine interest in the topic you’ll go to a bookstore and buy an introductory text and do some genuine learning. Nobody is going to debate someone who asserts “ha ha your definition of epistemology is wrong” and then goes on to define it as something they’ve half understood doing a 10 second google search. You’re not serious, you’re just playing games, like most of the posters here.

That’s what a lot of us are asking. In TAR (2001), the IPCC acknowledged that the same satellite data was contradicting computer model predictions. The US National Academy of Science made the same observation. Just prior to Kyoto, circa 1998, murmerings were heard to the effect that something had to be done about the satellite data. It seems that suggestion manifested between TAR and AR4 (2007). There were several attacks on the satellite data as well as the radiosonde (weather balloon) data which supported it. In AR4, the IPCC made allusions to ‘corrections’ made to the satellite data and that it was now in line with computer model predictions.

Rubbish!! There were no significant adjustments made to the satellite data. It was no more than a tenth of a degree, and in the tropics. In fact, it was one of the satellite data set makers, RSS, who brought the errors in the satellite data to light. RSS brought it to the attention of UAH that orbital variations were causing the UAH data to be slightly low. Both teams worked together to correct the problem, and in doing so, found the RSS data was too high and the UAH data not as low as had been thought. John Christy learned that when the new breed of satellites were lauched, with more accurate orbits and instrumentation.

John Christy, who works on the UAH team, with Roy Spencer, has acknowledged a warming in the atmosphere after the 1998 El Nino. It was roughly 2/10ths C and the upward trend lasted between about 1999 and 2003. Then the trend leveled off and it now seems to be declining. The direction of that trend wont be apparent for several more years.

What the IPCC did not tell you is far more significant. Under the IPCC theory, the atmosphere is supposed to be warmer than the surface by a significant amount. Up until 1995, there was no warming in the atmosphere while the surface, ‘on average’ was supposedly 0.6 C warmer. Under those conditions, it would be impossible for the atmosphere to warm the surface, a hallmark of their theory.

When you consider that Roy Spencer, whose site I linked to for the graph, is having trouble getting his papers published, you can’t help but smell a rat. His papers are contradicting the IPCC and it’s computer model-based theory. He is basing his papers on direct observation of atmospheric systems by the satellites and he is claiming the ENSO system is behind global warming, not CO2.

One of the problems I have with the AGW advocates on this blog is how they insist on peer review in known publications. Yet they see nothing wrong with a legitimate climate scientist being told not to submit papers to those publications that contradict AGW theory. The reason you don’t see more about satellite data in the scientific publications is obvious: it is being repressed.

sillyfilly “there is not one, I repeat not one, major temperature series which indicates a global cooling trend, where is his nonsense non-science originating”??

Depends on what length of trend you are willing to accept. We are currently on a 3 year cooling trend, according to the ‘major’ UAH series of satellite data. Although that is considered by many not to be a true trend, the question that must be answered is why it is happening. We are supposed to be seeing a positive decadal trend and the most recent decadal trend has been flat. The IPCC has been ominously quiet on that except for the hint by the IPCC head that there is no longer a rush for global warming concern.

In a 2008 study, Keenlyside et al, claim the flat trend is only temporary and is being depressed by the AMO (Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation). Others are claiming it is the PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation). Keenlyside has claimed there wont be any more warming till 2016. In another study, Tsonis et al showed that the AMO, PDO, ENSO and other ocean circulations were capable of warming and cooling the globe based on their coupling. Why Keenlyside sees the decadal flatness as only temporary is beyond me.

The thing you have to consider is which major series is most accurate. The satellite data is measured by microwave telemetry that scans 95% of the atmosphere daily. The other series are mainly from ground stations that cover a small fraction of the globe. That data is manipulated to supposedly correct it for the warming caused by cities growing around the measuring stations, but it is also subjectively manipulated according to what the manipulators see as what it ‘should’ have been. For example, a sudden spike in temperatures measured in the 1970’s is being questioned by some, and there is now a suggestion that it was a mistake.

It amuses me to see NASA GISS, and the rest, loudly proclaiming that even though 2008 cooled, it is still among the warmest years of all time. They are talking about a fraction of a degree C and amplifying that emotionally as if it is 5.0 C. That fraction of a degree is being questioned and the meaning of it as a global average is vague. Weather, in general, is a fairly localized phenomenon, dependent on local conditions. Why are we hung up on an ‘average’ global temperature fetish that has very little meaning to anyone locally?

“He (Spencer) is basing his papers on direct observation of atmospheric systems by the satellites and he is claiming the ENSO system is behind global warming, not CO2.”

And the energy that powers the ENSO system is derived from the Earth itself, whether according to Surge Tectonics or via EM coupling via the Van Allen Belts that are modulated by external electric currents, both Solar and/or galactic.

a THREE YEAR cooling trend – oh my lord ! – compared to a 100 year warming trend !! LOL

ENSO, PDO etc may affect global temperature – but what for a hundred year trend. My challenge to Cohenite to explain the temperature record based on the 400 year PDO record available still stands … waiting … waiting …

THREE YEARS !!!!! jeeez

And don’t forget – a cooling UAH trend got revised to a warming trend. What a balls up.

Your sense of absoluteism with remote sensing is also good for a giiggle! How many different satellite platforms with what decaying orbits with what sensor drift with what sun angles, over pass times and aerosols…. come on mate – give it away …
Have you ever personally done any work with satellite data ?

All data from probes and sensors are subject to calibration issues.

And what do you get when you compare RSS, UAH, GISS and CRU – the same basic story. Perhaps that says something …

IPCC – quiet ! for heavens sake – they don’t run after rabbit – their reviews are infrequent. They don’t do press releases responding to every bump in the science literature. Stop concocting bogus mythology.

Will: “what I am saying — which is burdened by the fact that it’s factually accurate — is that the climatological community regards AGW as the best theory for the upward tick in temperatures for the recent past.”

Considering that the AGW theory was proposed before any upward ticks in temperatures were noticed puts the cart before the horse.

AGW was never observed in the first place neccessitating a theory for it. It was instead deduced from Arrhenius’ flawed hypothesis that a reduction in atmospheric CO2 causes ice ages.

The fact that cherry picking data can demonstrate either cooling or warming strongly points to the fact that the phenomena, AGW, is not physically present as a robust signal. It happens when various spurious correlations occur from mathematical manipulation of random data or noise.

“Considering that the AGW theory was proposed before any upward ticks in temperatures were noticed puts the cart before the horse.”

Irrelevant. Aristarchus proposed the heliocentric (sun centred) cosmological model before it was physically observable. Does that make the fact that the Earth does orbit the sun untrue?

“AGW was never observed in the first place neccessitating a theory for it. It was instead deduced from Arrhenius’ flawed hypothesis that a reduction in atmospheric CO2 causes ice ages.”

Not sure what you are trying to say here. The standard model of physics is not directly observed either, but rather, deduced in a very indirect way from empirical measurements.

“The fact that cherry picking data can demonstrate either cooling or warming strongly points to the fact that the phenomena, AGW, is not physically present as a robust signal. It happens when various spurious correlations occur from mathematical manipulation of random data or noise.”

Non sequitur. All this tells us is that most people are over confident in what they think ‘proves’ their point of view. Problem is, people decide what’s true first, then look for the facts to support their arguments afterwards.

“It’s called pseudoscience.”

Nothing you’ve written logically follows to draw such a conclusion. Your arguments are muddled…

No Louis, I haven’t got the Mannian Stats; I presume you mean in connection with the Antarctica study? Perhaps luke, with his vast network of contacts, can get us a full copy of the paper; I’m interested in the new algorithm the boys have applied to the ‘observed’ data which, oddly enough, they admit is sparse and has stopped accurate analysis of the Antarctica interior before.

Will, the Antarctic is crucial to AGW theory; the Southern hemisphere is just not behaving according to theory while the UHI effect is always levied at the so-called AGW consistent AGW ‘effects’ in the Northern hemisphere; a new study by Mann proving the South, and in particular the Antarctic, is behaving as it should would be a real feather in the cap for Mann and the lads. So come on luke, let’s have some details of this new ABC approved study.

It seems to me that what the theory is in this regard is rather fluid.

“a new study by Mann proving the South, and in particular the Antarctic, is behaving as it should would be a real feather in the cap for Mann and the lads.”

Realclimate has been hammering the point for some time that Antarctic cooling is “expected”. It seems to me that if Antarctic cooling is in fact warming after all, they will have to flip flop their arguments. That is likely to harden the sceptics and the fence sitters (there is a limit to even a fence sitter’s credulity). However, it would be a propaganda victory as the general public has not been following these arguments in depth. As I said before, I’ve only taken a cursory glance at the issue and my initial impression is that it’s a case of the usual cherry picking, unfortunately.

Otherwise known as computer programmers who, from the rigid grammar of code writing, extrapolate that to the real world.

I discovered the pitfalls of this mode of thinking decades ago when a close family friend, one of the technical people with the Snowy Mountains Scheme, discovered computing. Very quickly did he start to apply his newly found knowledge to life in general, but intelligent enought to realise that one should not. Some here have not the experience to work that out, so you have to be tolerant.

That said, they might, perhaps, be the new fundamentalists of our times using digital bibles in stead of paper, and before that, stone ones.

Boys, the small amount of criticism I’ve given some of your ideas is a tiny taste of what you’d cop in the real world if you actually tested some of your goofier notions against real scientists and other academics…

OK, apologies for interrupting the name calling and abuse… please continue.

The Antarctica story to date has been that a larger ocean volume in the southern hemisphere would make this half of the world slower to warm. Any warming around Antarctica might increase the local hydrological cycle so some increased snow pack should occur initially. Additionally the vortex around Antarctica tends to “wall off” the deep interior from change somewhat. However, the Antarctica peninsula has been warming dramatically. And there has been considerable interest how both tropospheric increases in greenhouse gases combined with stratospheric ozone depletion may have changed the Southern Annular Mode and southern hemisphere circulation in the process. Also of interest was a paper that William Connolley was on that shows the mid-troposphere above Antarctica warming faster than anywhere else on Earth (not the ground).

Well Louis Hissink’s posts convinced me that during the 1970’s Bob Carter didn’t go around promulgating global cooling but after reading all the subsequent posts on this thread it seems that Bob Carter was convinced by all those who did talk about global cooling in the 70’s.

Guy hits it big buys a big boat, buys a captain’s jacket and hat, invites mom on board. Guy says to mom: “Look mom, I’m a captain” Mom says: Yes son, you think you’re a captain and for me you’re a captain, but for a captain?”

Luke, thanks for the paper; Mann might be down the list but the words describing the algorithm as interpolative and iterative rang [Mann] warning bells; as did the comparison with PCA; has anyone rang Ian Jolliffe? The paper disavows the westerly winds as a factor [assuming there is a warming]; this provides a contrary view;

In addition, the Worby et al paper from 2007 shows marked increase in sea-ice extent and thickness around Antarctica, while the Davis et al paper from 2005 shows a marked increase in the East Antartica ice sheet. One doesn’t know where to turn; perhaps Commodore Eli brought a navigator with him.

Anyone, with an open mind, who has read Bob Carter’s papers or watched his presentation on Utube would appreciate that he his a scientist of integrity. The abuse he is subject to for his views is quite atrocious.

he is NOT “abused”.

“people are pointing out that he is WRONG on all accounts, and we are supporting it with hard facts.”

Please provide one hard fact that demonstrates that global temperatures now are unusual or one hard fact to show C02 emissions are causing global warming?

I come new to the whole issue of AGW. Until very recently, like a substantial majority, I was happy to accept the AGW argument on faith. I presumed that if a large body of scientists believed it to the point of being able to assert it as a near certainty, then we had to do something about it. Recently however I have invested some considerable personal time in trying to understand the subject, and have been genuinely shocked by the complete absence of any evidence supporting the AGW argument. The empirical evidence seems to run completely counter to the AGW postulate. Additionally, the causal argument seems to be fundamentally flawed on several fronts. The first order impact of increasing atmospheric CO2 is that absorption of reflected IR across the CO2 signature frequencies takes place slightly more rapidly than before. However, since according to any physics or physical chemistry text, well supported by experimental data going back to the 1950s, adsorption-to-extinction across all of these relevant frequency bands occurs within 30m of the ground, then below this height, the net gain in heat retention directly attributable to increasing CO2 is quite literally negligible. The IPCC website is remarkably unclear on how it justifies the massive change in upper troposphere emissivity associated with CO2 addition, but as far as I can understand from external commentators, it appears that the IPCC models invoke an instantaneous increase in water vapour before vertical integration of the radiation-convection equations to calculate final emissivity increase, but without taking into account any corresponding increase in cloud formation. Can anyone on this site point me to a citable explanation or verifiable justification of the IPCC methodology in this regard? Coming back to the main subject of this thread, it is easy to take Dr Carter’s comments out of context. His main point about the last 10 years of temperature records (see his Youtube broadcast) was not that it showed cooling per se but that the data are not consistent with expectations if AGW is a valid hypothesis, given the measured net increase in atmospheric CO2 over the period. He also points to the fact that measurements in the upper troposphere and poles are not compatible with the expected temperature “signature” of AGW as predicted by the IPCC models. His comments about cooling really do relate to the long term trend – see the video for better context.

The reason why your post is a “crank post” is that you make it clear that you have no professional expertise in atmospheric physics, yet give the impression that you are confident in your ability to evaluate the science. Read intelligent contrarian views by all means, but the sheer deludedness of your opinions reflects badly on genuine sceptics through (unwanted) association, and has exactly the opposite of the effect you desire.

Ahh, good old Bob Carter! The same Bob Carter who was a contributing writer to Tech Central Science Foundation, formed in late November 2002. Exxon Mobil gave the Foundation $95,000 in 2003 for “Climate Change Support.”

“However, since according to any physics or physical chemistry text, well supported by experimental data going back to the 1950s, adsorption-to-extinction across all of these relevant frequency bands occurs within 30m of the ground, then below this height, the net gain in heat retention directly attributable to increasing CO2 is quite literally negligible.”

I think you are misunderstanding how the ‘absorption’ works. The energy isn’t absorbed, and then never released. The CO2 only holds the absorbed energy for a period of time, then re-releases it, in a random direction. That direction could be up, but it could also be straight back down again, where it came from. The energy that is radiated has to follow a path that is like going through a snakes and ladders game. It always ends up being released to space at the top of atmosphere, but the number of steps it takes can vary. The more CO2, the more steps it has to take.

If the energy was only ‘absorbed’ and never released, the lower 30M of the atmosphere would be a fiery cauldron by now.

(I was interested to read that the path that a photon has to take from the centre of the sun to the top of the sun. According to Wikipedia, it can take up to a million years to make the journey.)

Will,
“Read intelligent contrarian views by all means, but the sheer deludedness of your opinions reflects badly on genuine sceptics through (unwanted) association, and has exactly the opposite of the effect you desire.”
Thank you for your response and your helpful categorisation of me and my motivation in posting. This site needs a health warning saying “personal abuse is obligatory”. My statement regarding absorption to extinction comes from the foremost textbook of physical chemistry – 7th edition of Atkins and De Paula OUP 2002 – and has been verified experimentally. Not exactly contrarian. I don’t think it is disputed by any serious scientist on any side of the AGW debate, atmospheric physicist or not.

SJT – a more serious thanks for your response. I fully understand the need for retransportation of the heat energy. My question was a genuine enquiry relating to what the IPCC models actually do. I have a copy of the Collins report: “Radiative forcing by well-mixed greenhouse gases:
Estimates from climate models in the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4)” and am still struggling to understand the assumptions and boundary conditions used. Equally if I take the results of that report and do a simple Temperature equilibrium calculation based on the radiative forcing calculated to be directly associated with CO2, I obtain temperature changes which are significnatly less than the values published in the IPCC scenarios. So I would also like to understand what assumptions are made in converting the results from this calibration study into the parameterised form used in the IPCC SCMs. Once again, I would ask if anyone can point me to a reference which would help. I am specifically looking for something supported by IPCC explaining its case.

“Guy hits it big buys a big boat, buys a captain’s jacket and hat, invites mom on board. Guy says to mom: “Look mom, I’m a captain” Mom says: Yes son, you think you’re a captain and for me you’re a captain, but for a captain?”

Other than that, it’s amazing so much theoretical waffle could be generated for the physical behaviour of, what is physically effective a 2D spherical surface, (the Earth’s atmosphere in terms of the Earth’s size).

“SJT – a more serious thanks for your response. I fully understand the need for retransportation of the heat energy. My question was a genuine enquiry relating to what the IPCC models actually do. I have a copy of the Collins report: “Radiative forcing by well-mixed greenhouse gases:”

If you have serious question about the physics, you would be better off asking someone who knows the science in depth, not a layman like me. Go to one of the serious climate sites, eg, realclimate. Even if you do disagree with them, they do have a good understanding of the physics and what the case for AGW actually is. Places like this are just for entertainment value, really. Jennifer just posts topics, then ignores them after the first few responses, and isn’t a physicist or climatologist anyway.

For the accepted line on why the enhanced greenhouse effect will give a larger warming than you would expect from first principles try Weart’s history of the research.

WJP — you look like an idiot now — We’ve had the worst fires ever in Victoria, and that’s with modern telecommunication systems, better firefighting equipment including the best firefighting air craft — 2 erikson Air Crane Helicopters and 50 other air craft.

We did not have this during Ash Wednesday and Black Friday which would have been much lesser events if we had the modern firefighting and reconnaissance equipment we haven now.

>Comment from: WJP January 20th, 2009 at 12:05 pm

>So what David, care to inform all and sundry when we didn’t get temps. in the high 30s and into >the 40s, in Jan and Feb anywhere between, say, Melbourne and Brisbane. It’s high summer, one >expects stinkers and “tinderbox conditions”.
>I’m sceptical of the implications of “horrific fire conditions after 12 years of drought”. >Hmmmmm……. same old same old……..

Cooling and warming both as affected by cosmic events that happen cyclically and those that are once off events. Likely a cooling trend in the next few years. CO2 is not a major thermal factor but IS a pollutant and should be reduced much as SO2 (which is a much more severe coal industry pollutant). Man made CO2 contributes 1/8 to a solar driven CO2 to photosynthate occuring as a land and ocean total effort. This is an out-of-equilibrium effort and is considered also as a ‘once off event’, not cosmic but man made. Can it tilt the earth? Unlikely but it can damp the hight of the up and down oscillations. The real tragedy is, as often happens, that a false is accepted as an irrelevant ruth and valuable data is diluted as nonsense. Our bureaucracies could spend trilions on doing nothing and as the world naturally cools, claim that they have saved us from doom. The ancient Egyptians as did other civilizations did the same as they promissed the ignorant that they will make the sun raise again after (predictable only by the elete) eclipse occured. Let’s spend the trilions on reforming the coal industry, but let’s call it simply: POLLUTION

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

[…] Professor Bob Carter is an adjunct professor of geology at James Cook University and studies ancient climate change.He tells us that the world is cooling: THE National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that October in the US was marked by 63 record snowfalls and 115 lowest-ever temperatures. […]

[…] The predicted cooling seems to have already begun. Recent measurements of global temperatures suggest a gradual cooling trend since 1998 and 2007-2008 was a year of sharp global cooling. The cooling trend will likely continue as the sun enters a cycle of lower irradiance and the Pacific Ocean changed from its warm mode to its cool mode. (…) The good news is that global warming (i.e., the 1977-1998 warming) is over and atmospheric CO2 is not a vital issue. The bad news is that cold conditions kill more people than warm conditions, so we are in for bigger problems than we might have experienced if global warming had continued. Mortality data from 1979-2002 death certificate records show twice as many deaths directly from extreme cold than for deaths from extreme heat, 8 times as many deaths as those from floods, and 30 times as many as from hurricanes. The number of deaths indirectly related to cold is many times worse. (Read the whole article here). (Also see here) […]